Heather Curtis

Biography

Heather D. Curtis received her doctorate in the History of Christianity and American Religion from Harvard University in 2005. She is the author of Faith in the Great Physician: Suffering and Divine Healing in American Culture, 1860-1900 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007) which was awarded the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer prize from the American Society of Church History for the best first book in the History of Christianity. Her work has also been supported by the Louisville Institute, the Young Scholars in American Religion Program, the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University, and the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals. Her current research project, Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid (under contract with Harvard University Press) examines the crucial role evangelical missionaries and popular religious media played in the extension of US aid abroad from the late-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Analyzing the influence of missionaries and media on the emergence and development of international humanitarianism exposes the inextricable, yet deeply ambivalent and frequently contested links between practices of Christian charity and US imperialism. Articles on aspects of this research have been published in Material Religion: A Journal of Objects, Art & Belief; Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture; and The International Bulletin of Missionary Research.

Research Interest

Global Christianity American Religious History Evangelical, Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity Religion, Health and Healing Religion and Reform Movements Gender and Women's Studies in Religion